


Nebulas and Stardust

by HesitantNerd



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Healing, Nebula (Marvel) Feels, Nebula-centric (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:38:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HesitantNerd/pseuds/HesitantNerd
Summary: Nebula didn’t have dreams, she hadn’t for a while, not since- well, she couldn’t remember. Not since Thanos had plucked her brain from her skull and made it his own, replaced most of her body with metal and wires instead of organic flesh. Nebula rarely looked in mirrors, but when she did, she was conflicted.Nebula hadn't felt safe since forever, hadn't felt reassured, or loved, in any way, but she could remember times when she had. Tall trees, cosmic radiation, blue skin, dark hair, it all came back slowly, but surely the more she searched for it. Nebula dreamed of that, of what she could find that her mind still remembered, of what she could find now that she had a friend, somebody who had her back, as more than a survival tactic, but because she wanted to.





	1. Nebula

**Chapter 1: Nebula**

 

Nebula didn’t have dreams, she hadn’t for a while, not since- well, she couldn’t remember. Not since Thanos had plucked her brain from her skull and made it his own, replaced most of her body with metal and wires instead of organic flesh. Nebula rarely looked in mirrors, but when she did, she was conflicted.

Every time Thanos had added something new, he’d showed her, told her how it would improve her, how finally, it was her turn to beat Gamora, all because of what he had done to her. Now she looked at herself and wanted to scream, to rip away her false eye, to pry her metal skull back, to rip her left arm off. Nebula never beat Gamora.

It was different now though, they had reached an understanding, Gamora and Nebula, a tentative one, but one nonetheless. One where Nebula was able to let go of a lot of the hate she held for Gamora, because there were two sides to every story, one where she realized that Gamora and all of her glory were never the true villain, it was Thanos.

Nebula had worried about Gamora, about how she knew the location to the soul stone, about how even though she burned the map, that location was forever in Gamora’s mind. Her sister had tried to tell her at one point, but Nebula knowing that her mind was vulnerable, didn’t let her.

Nebula never understood why Gamora had told her, in a time before they were tentative friends, but she had, she had found Nebula on the massive ship and told her about the map, but before she could go any further, Nebula had ended that conversation.

Lost conversations were a strange thing to think about, thinking about what could have been. What could have been if Thanos was never here? Gamora and Nebula would never have met, Nebula would still be more flesh than metal, and Nebula wasn’t sure if she would go back and change anything. She knew how time travel worked, she’d done it, she’d witnessed the multiple realities it opened up, but for all of the Avengers meddling, only one timeline would be truly affected. Nebula wondered if it would affect the universe still.

Gamora was dead, Nebula knew that,  _ her _ Gamora at least. The Gamora that held her, that told her they would always be sisters, who tore past everything Thanos had done to them and healed her pain with happiness instead of hate. That Gamora was thrown off a cliff in Vormir for the soul stone, Nebula knew that now. She hadn’t for the longest time, she’d thought that Thanos had just killed her after he was done with her information.

But no, after Barton had travelled to Vormir with Romanoff, and the latter had thrown herself off the cliff to retrieve the stone for the former, Nebula had understood how wrong she had been in sending them there, she’d felt guilt about it later. Nebula had lost a lot in life, but Gamora had been the most painful.

For five years though, Nebula hadn’t understood just how Gamora had died, now she did, and she wished she didn’t, wished she hadn’t let herself get kidnapped back in twenty fourteen, wished she hadn’t seen  _ that _ Gamora. That Gamora, still so full of pain and hate, planning her escape but not completing it yet. Nebula wished her body crafted by Thanos couldn’t betray her, it had cost her team everything, their leader, it had almost defeated them a second time, because of Nebula.

That Gamora was still good though, she still freed her changed sister, helped her kill her evil old self. That Gamora had run, not truly a part of Thanos’ army, Starks’ snap hadn’t turned her to dust, and Nebula had seen her run, had tried to reach out, her charred metal arm the only thing powerful enough to hold Gamora there, but she’d shoved away and ran. Back to space most likely, running away from Nebula, who she didn’t know, who didn't know her.

It was almost more painful than knowing she was dead, because when Nebula tried to pull her sister back, to fatefully try and see some recognition in her eyes, it was nothing, and that stung more than any death could, even if that death was for Nebula’s sake.

Now Nebula was on Terra, Earth as they called it here. It was a primitive place, with only a few minds standing out from the rest, and they were the only reason that space hadn’t bulldozed this useless place long before then.

Stark was one of those minds, a mind who despite never flying a spaceship, had helped her attempt and fix theirs when they were stranded in space so long ago, who’d taught her paper football, a game she vowed to teach to somebody else, lest it be forgotten. After Thanos had been defeated once and for all, Rhodey had talked to Nebula, explaining that he’d found blueprints in Stark’s files for new metalwear, new metalwear for Nebula.

It had all happened very fast, but suddenly Nebula had a new arm, new head piece, and a new eyepiece. She hadn’t been put together right five years ago after Thanos had torn her apart, but in that time she’d fixed herself, gotten herself new hardware, but this was unlike anything Nebula had ever seen.

Rhodey had sent the prints to a Princess of a Terran nation, and while Nebula didn’t understand how that worked, the new pieces arrived remarkably fast. Vibranium was something that Nebula had come across once or twice in her life, it came from meteorites, Nebula’s old arm had been a  vibranium alloy, strong and light, but not indestructible, this new arm and face plates were completely pure vibranium.

Rhodey had explained that a meteorite full of the stuff had crash landed on earth in what was now a country called Wakanda, Nebula wasn’t sure what countries were, but whatever. She’d fit the new arms and headpieces herself, they were the same bronze colour as the old ones she had commissioned herself in the five years she was away.

The new plate around her eye and head held it together better than anything else ever had, it almost sharpened the vision in that eye, hard, considering that eye was false anyway. The arm was different all together, pure vibranium was better than any alloy, Nebula had tested the thing herself, it was stronger than most life forms, resistant to even Nebula’s strongest blasters, and the only thing that could make a scratch in it was one of her knives that was vibranium alloy itself, and even then, the scratch was only noticeable to Nebula’s new vibranium eye.

She’d asked Rhodey why, why go to the trouble to give her such nice things. Nebula liked Rhodey, as much as she could, he understood in some backwards way, how not to be ashamed of one’s faults. He’d said she deserved them, the new arm and eye and head pieces, Nebula had left then, unable to thank him, but she thought he might have understood anyway.

That led Nebula to now, where she sat in her crippled spaceship that she’d fixed five years ago with Rocket after Danvers had carried her and Stark back to Terra. The Guardians would leave soon, Quill wanted to chase the not Gamora, who was still in this universe somewhere, the Asgardian Thor wanted to come with them, done with Terra, but Nebula wasn’t done quite yet. 

She’d gone to the funeral today. Almost every planet had death customs, but standing around in black, in silence, while flowers were pushed out onto a lake was one of Nebula’s favourites. Nebula had grown up in black and metal and darkness. She’d grown up in space, with the void at her window and stars always too far away to really see more than pinpricks. Sometimes Nebula floated by nebula’s, what she was named after, for on her home planet there was one nearby, a cloud you could see spreading through the sky, all hazy and beautiful. Nebula was a popular name with luphomoids. Nebula’s race could see more than most, her eyes were pits of black, able of picking up cosmic radiation and darkness more than most. That had been the only thing Nebula was better at then Gamora, but even then, Thanos had changed Gamora to be better.

Of course he hid her modifications, hid her new muscles and enhanced eyes and stronger heart and lungs under her green skin and long hair, unlike Nebula, who got patchy purple and blue add ons that never really matched her real hue, who got her scalp replaced, the only thing Nebula kept looking the same was her one eye, and it was just black.

Nebula could remember her home planet, she remembered clouds of stardust that stretched across skies, night and day, purple and blue and orange and red, she remembered temperate weather, never really changing, never quite warm, but never cold. Nebula remembered trees, tall trees with trunks as thick as ten people and tall as anything. There was a sun, a yellow star that shone bright for a few hours a day. Nebula couldn’t remember the name though. She had tried to forget at one point, to shove those memories away, to try and be better, but sometime in the past five years, Nebula had decided that she’d wanted it all back. It the past week since the battle, Nebula had gone into her own mind, while she was replacing her eye and headpieces, and disabled her projector.

It was a cruel thing, only ever used to gain information that Nebula wouldn’t say, but she got rid of it, recircuted the power for it to somewhere else, and tore out the little thing that had been connected to her old eye. It was freeing, to know that she couldn’t have her own memories used against her again.

Nebula had heard Stark talk for weeks while they were stranded in space, he’d talked a lot about this planet, how nice it was. Nebula had to agree in some respects. She didn’t like it’s cities, too much like other planets with none of the sleekness, but she liked its nature. It had cleaner, more oxygen rich air than most planets, and water that was easily drinkable even from nature.

It had trees, not near as big as trees Nebula remembered, but trees nonetheless. So Nebula travelled north. Something deep within her wanted to find something that reminded her of times long gone. Quill and the rest were staying for a while, he wanted to go to Missouri, whatever that was, so Nebula took a pod, and flew herself north on Terra, apparently it got colder up here. 

Nebula had her radios to Terran frequencies, and she knew that they had other things that flew in the sky, much more primitive than anything Nebula had, but still, she kept the radio on, just incase some terran wanted to tell her to get out of the way.

Nebula didn’t want to go too north, not wanting it to be too cold, so she had landed in a clearing a bit away from a the nearest settlement, but still near other terran dwellings, and now she stepped into the air.

It wasn’t quite the same, but it was something. The air was too humid, even though it was cooler than where Nebula had been before, it was still too humid, the air too wet, and the trees weren’t as tall, weren’t as thick. The sky was cloudless and blue, but the sun a bit bright, and Nebula was used to multicoloured skies at all times on her planet. Swirling with cosmic radiation and star nurseries, visible day and night.

Nebula was still a warrior, still an assassin, but she was distracted, which was why she heard the click of a human trigger too late.

“Who are you and what are you doing on my property?” Nebula turned to the terran woman in question who spoke, she could have laughed, she was in fact pointing a large terran made gun at her, the gun was almost longer than the human’s torso.

She was a weak looking thing, small, with long orange hair, a liability, and unprotected vitals, Nebula could shoot this woman before she could pull her own trigger, but she didn’t, instead, Nebula just cocked her head.


	2. Jade

When Jade looked over her evening cup of coffee to see an actual alien spaceship looking thing landing in the clearing not a one minute walk from her house, she only had one thought.

“God, why today?”

Jade grabbed the gun by her front door, some giant rifle that she’d only shot once or twice, and marched out the front door and down her weed covered dirt driveway. She took a sharp veer to the left, and when she arrived in the wood clearing, an area where she chopped logs to dry for firewood for the next year, the alien spaceship thing had already landed, and an alien was already outside of it.

Something about it took Jade’s breath away, as a human, she was used to aliens and concepts like this now, it had been just over ten years since the first ones had invaded New York, hell, an alien had snapped half of life in the universe away five years ago, Jade had stayed.

This alien here now though, was different, it looked like a she, but Jade really couldn’t be sure of alien gender, and she was blue. Not entirely, but mostly, she wore a black leather combat outfit of some sort, but the most shocking thing about her to Jade was just it,  _ her. _ The Chitauri, Thanos, his army, they’d been ugly, looking like horrifying monsters, this alien just looked, _pretty_ , almost.

She had no hair, just a bald blue head, a purple striped section down the center, and bronze plating around her closed left eye and back on on her scalp. Her one arm was blue, but Jade could see the patchwork it was made out of, different blue melding together with unreal seams and edges that most flesh beings didn’t have. The other arm was more obviously fake, the same bronze as the aliens head pieces, but expertly crafted to match her other arm, it just looked a different colour, that if Jade were to paint the thing, it would look like flesh.

Cool or not, an alien was still in Jade’s wood clearing, so she raised the rifle, cocking it, and vowing not to drop the heavy thing, even when the alien’s eyes snapped open to reveal two pits of black.

“Who are you and what are you doing on my property?”

The blue alien moved almost faster than Jade could perceive, and with a resounding blast, Jade’s rifle lay on the ground in pieces.

“Hey! That was my fathers!” And suddenly Jade was filled with such a rage that no scary blue alien with a scary alien gun could frighten her back as she stomped towards the scary in question, no weapon anymore, but fuming mad nonetheless.

That rifle had been her fathers, one of the only things she’d kept of his from their old city apartment after he and the rest of Jade's family had turned to dust in front of her. Now it lay in pieces, and Jade had cried too much over the past five years to cry more about it now, but she was mad.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have pointed it at me.” The alien growled out, her voice deep and grating, but not moving back as Jade finally got to her and swung with a ferocity she hadn’t felt in a long time, the alien caught her fist in that metal hand, and dang, did that hurt or what.

Jade felt the impact of her knuckles cracking and splitting as they hit the open palm of metal that almost seemed to push Jade back when she hit it.

“FUCK, ow! Shit!” And for all of Jade’s screaming and clutching of her hand to her chest, the alien only cocked her bald blue head even more to the left.

“Interesting.”

“Look lady,” Jade sucked a breath in through her teeth, fighting back the tears at the throbbing in her hand, “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but you broke my dad’s rifle and I really want you to just  _ leave! _ ”

The alien looked at Jade for a moment longer before straightening, “Your hand will need to be reset, I’ll fix it.”

☼☼☼

Nebula wasn’t sure why she helped the human, she had asked her to leave, to get out after breaking something that clearly held sentimental value to her.  _ Weak _ . But Nebula knew humans, at least better than she had five years ago, and she’d just broken this humans hand.

It was self defense, after Nebula had shot her weak weapon down, the woman had yelled at her, come stomping over, and thrown possibly one of the worst punches straight into Nebula’s open vibranium hand.

After Nebula had offered to fix the humans hand, well, told her she would, the human had shut up, just turned around and led Nebula back to her cabin surrounded by large trees, near a roadway, and with a dirt lane. In her own way, Nebula did feel bad, she hadn’t meant to break the humans hand, it was a unnecessary casualty, so she’d fix it.

The human had screamed more when Nebula had cracked the bones back into place, but didn’t threaten anymore weak violence, and for that Nebula was grateful, it was a waste of her talents to defend herself from such idiocy.

Human physiology was strange to Nebula, but not completely unknown, Quill was human, but she'd never reset his bones, Nebula herself would reset her own parts all the time, but whether there was any actual bone matter left in her was the real question.

“What are you doing here?” The human had been silent until that point, except for some sharp intakes of breath and the yelling when Nebula had reset her hand. 

“Looking around.” Nebula finished wrapping up the human’s hand with some bandage she’d given her, and now stood awkwardly at the front of the small cabin.

“I meant earth.” Technically, Nebula could have meant earth with her looking around comment, but the human seemed to look past this immediately, the inhabitants of Terra must have known about the battle that occurred not a week ago, and Nebula hadn’t travelled that long away from where the battle was.

“I fought in the battle against Thanos.”

“You fought in that?!” Nebula heard the surprise in the human’s voice, she looked at the shorter being, who was still holding her wrapped arm to her chest, but now staring at Nebula with shock and wonder instead of fear and anger, Nebula felt an anger of some sort spark through her at the change.

“Yes.”

“Are you an avenger?” The question caught Nebula off guard, like a sucker punch to the gut.

_ “When we get back to earth, I’m naming you an honorary avenger.” _

_ “I don’t know what that means.” _

_ “We avenge the earth, we’re pretty shit at it, but we like to try, we’ve saved it a few times.” _

_ “You cannot avenge something that hasn’t been defeated. Maybe you should be called the protectors.” _

_ “Was that a joke? Oh my god I’m witnessing history right now, somebody call the Vatican, Blue Meanie made a joke!” _

_ “Do not make me regret saving you Stark.” _

_ “If you wanted to kill me you would, I’m glad we got stuck in space Smurfette, I really am, no one else I’d rather be starving and suffocating with.” _

_ “What is the Vatican?” _

_ “A cult.” _

“No.” But the human still looked like she wanted to ask something, and for once, Nebula wasn’t itching to leave, “What?” She ground out.

“Sorry for attacking you, or, attempting to.”

“Whatever.”

The human didn’t say anything else for a moment, just looked confused and lost.

“My name is Nebula, I’ll be in my ship.” That was a thing that humans did, they introduced themselves, and Nebula wasn’t really sure why she wanted to introduce herself to this particular human, but it felt right. Everything had felt right, ever since Nebula had landed and stared at the too short trees, and breathed in the too humid air, it was still right.

And even as Nebula sat in the pod that wasn’t technically hers, she still felt as if where she was was right. Nebula had never felt that before. The only place she’d ever truly felt right was in pain, in battle, on a mission, with Gamora, watching Thanos die. Since then it had been uncertainty, but Nebula had gone to the Terran funeral, for the one Terran that changed her opinion on others.

She’d felt like an idiot there, surrounded by the galaxy’s biggest idiots, and looking like it too. Humans looked the same except for minor differences in facial features, and even though their flesh had variation, it was all some form of beige or brown. Maybe it was their sun, or atmosphere. Nebula was blue and bronze metal and purple, all bald and odd, next to human women and their long hair.

She’d felt strange in looks, but not spirit, she mourned the loss of Stark, a good man among few.

The yellow sun of earth was setting now, casting strange shadows of annoying bright light into Nebula’s eyes, and she was startled for the second time in a day, very rare, by a tap at the door of the pod.

“Hi, I’m Jade, and even if you’re not an avenger, do you want some dinner? I made extra.”


End file.
